Manchester City will not release their fringe players on free transfers.
The Guardian says City insist they will not let their large cast of unwanted fringe players leave for nothing despite knowing that if they cannot find buyers for players such as Craig Bellamy, Wayne Bridge, Emmanuel Adebayor and Roque Santa Cruz they will lose millions of pounds in "dead money" via the extraordinary salary structure at Eastlands.
The planned exodus began on Monday when Dynamo Kyiv confirmed they had agreed a £3.9m deal for Vladimir Weiss but City are having substantial problems shifting the other players who are now so far out of Roberto Mancini's plans that they train alone and are not even required to attend matches.
Many of those players will have to take huge pay cuts if they are to revive their careers but Adebayor's proposed transfer to Tottenham Hotspur sums up the problems facing City, with the forward determined not to lose the £150,000-a-week salary he earns for doing nothing more than a few gentle workout sessions at City's training ground.
Those figures are prohibitive for Spurs and, with City extremely reluctant to subsidise any part of the deal, the move is at an impasse as Adebayor, signed from Arsenal for £25m in the summer of 2009, continues to be excluded from the rest of Mancini's first-team squad.
